


A Scholarly Conundrum

by Control_Room



Series: The Big Picture [2]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Body Modification, Gen, Guilt, Recreating the world, Studying, Uncle-Nephew Relationship, death mention, very slight, void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 00:37:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19188373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Control_Room/pseuds/Control_Room
Summary: Bertrum and Grant face a small issue concerning a tall man.





	A Scholarly Conundrum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LemonBurnt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonBurnt/gifts).



> Thank you to Ichaisme (Lemonburnt here on ao3) for getting me to finally type this to paper with your sweet comments. I'd been feeling low lately and thank you for getting me some motivation to write <3.

Muffled, hiccupping sobs were what woke Bertrum first.

 

Hands, the large steady hands on his shoulders, shaking him, finished the job.

 

He woke up to a pair of perfect square glasses.

 

Grant’s tear streaked face greeted him, though his tears did not seem to be recent, no, they seemed to be from a bygone day, the river marks left even after a draught for eternity. His limbs were stretched and bloated, and his movements were as steady as ever, but with a strange, jerking, swaying quality.

 

Bertrum felt as though he was underwater.

 

He could not hear right, and everything was blurred and blotchy.

 

His muscles seemed to spasm and twitch, as though under a powerline.

 

He could feel hands other than Grant’s one firm on his throat, the other on his shoulder.

 

Grant’s snapping hand brought him back to sentience. He blinked at the slow motion, trying to understand what was happening.

 

Grant shook his head, and then shook Bertrum’s shoulders again, saying something.

 

Bertrum felt so heavy, his limbs like lead sinking in ink.

 

And his eyes drifted shut….

 

Hands on his shoulders, yelling in his ear, shaking, shaking, spinning.

 

He jolted awake.

 

“Good god man!” He barked at Grant. “Can’t a man rest for a minute!?”

 

“You’ve been out for months,” Grant reprimanded him, his voice more gravelly than ever. Bertrum did not understand the words he was saying. “We’ve been waiting for you. There is a problem, and you might be the only one to help us with it.”

 

“Problem?” Bertrum spoke slowly, taking in his environment. Darkness, lined with flashes of green. “Problem?! In singular!? This whole situation is a problem, what is happening, where are we, and for my sake, where is Joey!?”

 

“And that’s the problem,” Grant wryly remarked. “Now… the question to answer your question… which Joey?”

 

The world stopped for Bertrum then.

 

The spinning in his head came to a complete stand still, but the gears within whirled faster than ever. He always suspected, but he never knew for certain….

 

“Are you… is Johan…” Bertrum hoarsely murmured, ignoring Grant’s incredulous look over him remembering the man’s name. “Is he… still alive somehow?”

 

He grabbed Grant’s strangely shaped arm. 

 

“Mr. Cohen, is my nephew still alive?” he demanded, looking directly into the startled accountant’s brown eyes. “Is Johan alive?!”

 

“In… In a way,” Grant hesitantly replied. “He’s worse off than us, he does not have a physical form. Yours is… rather incredible. Johan outdid himself.”

 

“So he is alive,” Bertrum muttered. He looked beyond Grant, and was able to recognise the Flynn brothers consoling a sobbing Wally. “What happened?”

 

“We died,” Grant told bluntly him in short. “Wally has just been food poisoned.”

 

“And how are we here? What is here?” Bertrum spit fired, quizzical. He never learned of a place like this in all his travels. The greek man ran a hand through his hair, and was startled to find it feeling loose, some strands coming away with his fingers. The jewish german sighed, pulling back the ride maker’s attention. “Well?”

 

“Those are questions to ask Johan,” Grant responded. “Let’s go.”

 

The place was more than unnerving.

 

Empty and desolate, with random plants and natural matter, all marked with notes in Johan’s hand writting. What was he doing? What was he doing? What was Johan doing?

 

Johan was scrawling on a wall when Bertrum and Grant found him. Rapidly.

 

Faster than the human eye could keep up.

 

But to Bertrum, with his sight better than a hawk, was able to see the bullet speed inscriptions.

 

Notes on how things worked, notes on anatomy, physics, eating habits, location, all things for one small being of life, just one miniscule bacterium. Millions of other microscopic beings dotted every invisible surface, sparks of life in an otherwise pitch dark room.

 

Bertrum noticed his own glow, along with Grant’s, steady and firm. Looking back up to Johan, he saw that his glow was cracked, with empty spaces, missing parts, wispy and faint.

 

“Johan,” Grant intoned, and Joey swiveled around to face them. He paled when he caught Bertrum’s eyes, looking to the non existent ground. “Joey, where will these beings go? Are they the right size and shape?”

 

Johan said nothing, cheeks ablaze, and he bit his lip.

 

“Do you know?” Grant pressured, glancing at Bertrum with a ‘See?’ look in his eye. “Are you certain? What makes you think you can save anything if you are not sure about a microscopic lifeform? And what of those smaller and bigger?”

 

Johan still was silent, shifting uncomfortably, the clinking of chains following his motion. Grant scowled, hands balling into fists.

 

Johan turned sharply, about to make a brilliant decision to run for it, ignoring his problems until they would grab him by the heel and drag him back to face them.

 

“You stay right there!” Grant barked, and so Joey remained - one foot still in the air, one arm slightly raised in the very buds of his now failed escape attempt.

 

“Johan… nephew,” Bertrum breathed, tense shoulders slumping. Johan stiffened. “I thought… I thought you were… gone. I thought I would never see you again….”

 

“... neither did I,” Johan admitted. “I didn’t want to be seen again….”

 

“What… are you doing?” Bertrum took a few cautious steps as he asked him softly. Johan stared at the bacteria he had been modeling. “Joey….”

 

“Don’t call me that,” Johan hissed, his arms folding over defensively. Bertrum stopped moving toward him and looked to Grant for guidance, raising his eyebrows exasperatedly, the accountant replying with a small shrug.Johan’s shoulders eased down. “Please. Don’t call me that. He’s not me.”

 

“I see,” Bertrum understood. So there were two. How very interesting. “Still, young Icarus, you haven’t answered my question: what are you doing?”

 

“Since I… destroyed the world,” he spoke slowly, brows furrowed, either trying to comprehend his own words or understand from another view point, “I’ve spent every possible moment attempting to repair it, and that includes returning all natural and unnatural laws to it. Additionally to the forces of nature, nature and man made creations all need to be redone precisely where they had been.”

 

Grant looked at Bertrum, searching his face to see if he understood where the problem lay.

 

Bertrum looked over at the fiditing Johan, and he understood easily.

 

Johan, though well read and taught fine, never got to go to college. Understandably. Yet, Bertrum thought with a slight smile, he didn’t want someone who was not one hundred percent certain about how something worked to create it.

 

“Well?” He inquired, turning to Grant. “What are we going to do?”

 

Grant shrugged. 

 

“I can think of nothing more than making him learn.”

 

“M-me?” Johan stuttered, lost and nervous. “Learn… what?”

 

Bertrum and Grant left him there. They walked through wavering, decrepit streets until they reached the old university, piling books together. The books followed them in the air. They traversed the uncertain terrain to Bertrum’s home, and retrieved books from there as well.

 

Johan was still working in the microscopic chamber when they returned. He turned to greet them, perplexed by the books. 

 

They dumped them down before him.

 

“Study.” Was Bertrum’s simple order.


End file.
